After researching 5 overseas student health cover providers and 11 working visa health cover providers, Canstar has revealed 2 winners of the Outstanding Value Awards for 2018.
Canstar’s Star Ratings for Overseas Student Health Cover and Working Visa Health Cover use a sophisticated methodology that compares health insurance policies on both price and features for those travelling to Australia for study or work.
Canstar has released the 2018 award results for these two products, with Medibank taking out the Outstanding Value award for Overseas Student Health Cover and IMAN taking out the title for Working Visa health cover.
In 2018, Canstar researched and rated 5 providers of Overseas Student Health Cover (OSHC), coverage that provides international students with out of hospital and in hospital medical services. This year’s winning provider was Medibank, who has taken out this award for the first time.
Canstar Research found Medibank’s premiums for student health cover were market-leading for couples and most of the family profiles, while being extremely competitive in the singles market.
For example, 1-year premiums for couples with Medibank were $2,766, while the market average was $3,211.40.
Canstar also found Medibank was highly competitive when it came to features, with standouts including:
Medibank is a provider of health insurance, travel insurance, life insurance and pet insurance, in addition to overseas student health cover.
When it comes to health insurance, Medibank has won Canstar’s Private Health Insurance Awards every year from 2008 through to 2017.
Compare Overseas Student Health Cover
In 2018 Canstar Research rated 11 providers of working visa health cover (WVHC) that complied with visa condition 8501 (the Government standard that specifies visa holders must hold adequate health insurance while in Australia). Of these 11 providers, IMAN took out 2018’s Outstanding Value Award for Working Visa Health Cover for the third year running.
IMAN performed particularly well in this year’s research in terms of its low out-of-pocket costs in comparison to the rest of the market. IMAN’s monthly premiums were market leading for singles and couples, while being competitively positioned for families:
IMAN also required no excesses or co-payments from its members for this type of health cover.
When it came to features, IMAN offered ambulance, private hospital and pharmaceutical medicine coverage with particularly competitive hospital inclusions. This included coverage of all medical costs while in hospital and no limitation periods on obstetric or psychiatric treatment, plastic non-cosmetic (such as reconstructive surgery) and podiatric surgery.
IMAN has been a subsidiary of nib for seven years and is soon to be rebranded to nib. IMAN currently has three working visa health cover products rated by Canstar:
Canstar has strict requirements for OSHC and WVHC products to be eligible for our Star Ratings:
For OSHC:
For WVHC:
All eligible products are reviewed annually, with points awarded for comparative pricing and for the array of positive features attached. To arrive at the total score for OSHC, Canstar applies a weight of 70% to the price score with a 30% weight applied to the feature score, while WVHC has a weighting of 60% for the price score and 40% for the feature score. The weightings reflect the importance of costs and features in determining the products offering outstanding value.
For more information about how the Star Ratings are calculated, refer to our methodology documents for OSHC and WVHC.
To compare OSHC and WVHC, see below:
Compare Overseas Student Health Cover
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